Q.Given below is a list of autotrophs and heterotrophs. With your knowledge about food chain, establish various linkages between the organisms on the principle of 'eating and being eaten'. What is this inter-linkage established known as?
Algae, hydrilla, grasshopper, rat, squirrel, crow, maize plant, deer, rabbit, lizard, wolf, snake, peacock, phytoplankton, crustaceans, whale, tiger, lion, sparrow, duck, crane, cockroach, spider, toad, fish, leopard, elephant, goat, Nymphaea, Spirogyra.

The inter-linkage you establish by connecting these organisms on the principle of "eating and being eaten" is known as a food web.

A food chain is a linear sequence showing energy transfer from one trophic level to the next—for instance, algae → crustaceans → fish → crane. However, in nature, organisms rarely feed on just one type of food. A rat might eat maize grains, a grasshopper, or even scavenge; a crow feeds on insects, grains, and small animals; a tiger preys on deer, goats, or wild boar. When you map all these multiple feeding relationships together, the simple chains interweave into a complex network.

This network is the food web. It shows that energy flow in an ecosystem is not a single pathway but a mesh of interconnected chains. For example:

• Producers: algae, hydrilla, maize, Nymphaea, Spirogyra, phytoplankton
• Primary consumers: grasshopper, deer, rabbit, elephant, goat, crustaceans …

When we look at the list of organisms provided, we're seeing a snapshot of an ecosystem's cast of characters: producers and consumers, predators and prey, all bound together by the fundamental biological currency of energy. The autotrophs here — algae, hydrilla, maize plant, phytoplankton, Nymphaea (water lily), and Spirogyra — are the foundation. They capture sunlight and convert it into chemical energy through photosynthesis, making them the entry point for energy into the living world.

Now the heterotrophs depend entirely on this captured energy, either by eating the producers directly or by eating other consumers. A grasshopper munches on the maize plant; a sparrow snaps up the grasshopper; a snake might prey on the sparrow. But here's where it gets interesting: that same snake might also eat a rat, which itself fed on grain. A deer grazes on grass, a tiger hunts the deer, but a tiger might also take down a goat. The rat could be eaten by a snake or an owl; the rabbit by a wolf or a leopard. Crustaceans filter phytoplankton from water, fish eat crustaceans, and larger fish or birds like cranes and ducks feed on smaller fish.

What emerges is not a single straight line but a tangled, interconnected network. The peacock eats insects and seeds; the crow is an omnivore scavenging across multiple sources; the toad snaps up cockroaches and spiders; the elephant browses on a variety of plant matter. Each organism is a node, and the feeding relationships are threads linking them in multiple directions.

Sort the given organism list into two columns first — Autotrophs | Heterotrophs — then draw feeding arrows from at least two different producers toward at least two different consumers each. As soon as any single consumer has arrows arriving from more than one …